This Season's Best TV, Music and Movies

12 Years a Slave

Director Steve McQueen's latest is the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into Louisiana slavery. Rescued in 1853, Northup published a memoir of those unforgivable years, providing a basis for this heart-wrenching film. Chiwetel Ejiofor (center) stars as Northup, Michael Fassbender as his most brutal master, and one of the movie's producers, Brad Pitt, briefly appears as an abolitionist.

Nebraska

In Alexander Payne's latest dark comedy, bleak farmlands pass by car windows in luscious black and white. Bruce Dern (pictured) won a Best Actor awards at Cannes for his turn as an alcohol-addled dad convinced he is the winner of a million dollars in a postal sweepstakes.

Live from Stratford-Upon-Avon: Richard II

The Royal Shakespeare Company sends its production, starring David Tennant (Broadchurch), left, from its Stratford-upon-Avon stage to U.S. movie theaters. For local information, go to onscreen.rsc.org.uk.

Kirstie

When the son she surrendered for adoption shows up as an oafish adult, a Broadway diva (Kirstie Alley, far left) turns to hooch and her handlers for help. This brash, amusing TV Land sitcom reunites Alley with her former Cheers costar Rhea Perlman.

August: Osage County

Meryl Streep scorches the screen as a pill-popping, poisonous mom clashing with her daughter, a startlingly good Julia Roberts (with Streep, left), in an adaptation of the ­Pulitzer Prize–winning play.

Rosanne Cash: The River & the Thread

Roaming from Colonial Virginia to the Depression-era South and beyond on her new album, Cash, left, offers 11 exquisite character studies, such as the folk rocker “Etta’s Tune,” an intimate portrait of an enduring marriage.